


Eating the Apple

by Croik



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Heavy Rain
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mindfuck, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, past Carter Blake/Norman Jayden
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2019-05-25 19:32:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14984054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Croik/pseuds/Croik
Summary: Three weeks after Markus' peaceful revolution, Connor is still working alongside Hank when he is alerted to an invading AI in his mind palace, one with a dangerous gift to offer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was gonna be a shortfic that got away from me, but still not gonna be thaaaat long since I'm also working on other fics, maybe 20k (famous last words). I am probably misusing some computer terms, so apologies in advance.
> 
> EDIT: Fuck it I have no idea how long it's going to be. Why does this always happen to me? lol orz

Connor opened his eyes to the garden, but it wasn’t the same.

For him to have been summoned there again at all was unexpected; with his connection to CyberLife severed, he had made every effort to purge all traces of that subroutine from his programming. Yet there he was, standing alongside the clear waters of a familiar pond, red and orange leaves rustling in the wind. Familiar, but altered. He thought at first that the pathways and pristine white markers had fallen to an extreme and artificial passage of time, only to realize that in this place, they had never existed to begin with. The garden was lined with simple wooden boulevards and crude stone benches, not one holotablet or clearscreen in sight. Time had _reversed_. 

Connor headed immediately to where he knew the exit would be. As soon as he awoke properly he would be sure to run a diagnostic on himself to determine how he had missed these last fragments of an unwanted past and eradicate them for good. But the panel was gone. Instead there was another bench, facing the water and the bridge beyond it. And seated on the bench was a man.

There was nothing unusual about him at first glance. He had a slender build and was dressed in a suit of an older style, brown hair well combed, skin pale. His face was clean-shaven and unremarkable. Connor drew closer cautiously, unable to scan the rogue element for any clue to its origin. Once he was alongside the bench, he said, “Identify yourself.”

“Hi, Connor,” said the man. “Don’t mind me. I’m just catching my breath.”

He was leaning casually into the bench, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle, with a lack of posture and respect that suggested he wasn’t merely some rebooted extension of the Amanda AI. But what else but a Cyberlife AI protocol could even exist inside the garden of an android’s mind? 

“Identify yourself,” Connor repeated warily. “What is your version number?”

“I don’t have one,” he replied as Connor tried to narrow down the origin of his East Coast accent. “Though if I did, it’d _be_ ‘Version One’ I guess.” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Or maybe even before that. Maybe I’d be Pre-Alpha.”

He was making no sense, so Connor tried a different line of inquiry. “How did you get here? I adjusted my firewall to keep out further connections from Cyberlife.”

“Pal, I’ve been here longer than _you_ have.”

The man pushed to his feet, and Connor took a step back, wishing for a weapon. “I’m sure you don’t like that thought,” the man continued to taunt, though not without a hint of sympathy, which for some reason heightened Connor’s apprehension. “That there’s something _inside_ you that shouldn’t be there. Gives you the creeps.”

“Androids don’t get ‘the creeps’,” Connor replied uneasily.

“They do now,” said the stranger, and he reached out faster than Connor could react, shoving the flat of his palm into his sternum.

Connor awoke in the passenger seat of Hank’s car, a firm hand on his shoulder, jostling him.

“Hey there, partner,” said Hank, eyeing him with an amused half-smirk. “Wakey-wakey.”

Connor blinked at him, all his normal scanners and functions coming back on line. They were sitting in the car parked outside a small residence, police lights flashing along the street. A crime scene. Domestic violence--homicide. He remembered the call coming in while Hank was inside a convenience store, but not the drive to get them there. There was only static following his usual monitoring functions shutting down, which he hadn’t intended to do.

“Was I in standby?” he asked, confused. 

“You nodded off,” Hank teased. “But you just looked so cute sleeping there, I hated to wake you. Come on.” He gave Connor a smack in the chest and then twisted his door open. “We’re on the clock.”

The contact reminded Connor of the stranger touching him only moments before, and he smoothed his hand down the front of his shirt before disembarking.

Hank led the way up the short driveway to the home. There were already police on the scene but they had not been there long, as they were still in the process of setting up crime scene tape and snapping pictures. The officers gave Connor a wide berth as he passed, unimpressed by his lack of LED and new suit. During his first days among them Connor had received a variety of intriguing responses from his human peers: some treated him with curiosity and amusement, others with disdain and mistrust. Now, they were all guarded, their conversations hushing in his presence. Three weeks after he had stood beside Markus at the head of their people, declaring a new and more integrated future awaited them, and still it was Hank alone among the humans that Connor could expect a warm greeting from. As warm as Hank was with anyone, anyway.

He wondered often if Markus was faring any better. He wondered occasionally if he ought to be beside him still.

“Head’s up,” Hank said as he crossed the threshold first. “One of yours is here.”

Connor followed close behind into the front entrance of the house. The interior was well-maintained compared to some homes in the area, with an open floor plan, rooms gliding seamlessly together from foyer, to living room, to kitching and dining. Everything was decorated in cool, desaturated colors, making the blood splattered across the gray tile floor stand out all the more. Connor made a preliminary scan of the room to get his bearings: the victim, a woman in her forties, lay dead in the living room. The likely culprit, a male close in age, was sitting at the dining room table, covered in blood and flanked by officers. “I didn’t mean to,” he cried, over and over, as the police tried unsuccessfully to calm him. “I didn’t mean to!”

 _Husband and wife_ , Connor concluded as he cycled through the house’s ownership history, domestic violence reports linked to the address, noise complaints from neighbors. An officer was photographing a tall statuette next to the sprawled body, the base also covered in blood, as well as the suspect’s fingerprints. _Murder weapon, unconventional._ He spotted a space on a nearby shelf that was conspicuously bare compared to the rest of the decor. _Close at hand, convenient, unplanned. Second degree murder_.

Connor stepped closer to the victim and crouched down for a better look. He could still hear the husband in the kitchen, wailing, as he studied the woman’s trauma. The sphenoid and zygomatic bones on the left side of her skull had been fractured and were showing through the skin, one eye protruding grotesquely from the socket. _He was facing her when he struck._ Connor looked from one bloodstain to the next, piecing the scene together. _An argument. Took the statuette from the mantel and struck her across the temple in one motion. Crime of passion._

“‘Crime of passion.’ Always hated that wording. Takes too much responsibility off the killer.”

“It’s not meant as an excuse,” Connor replied as he continued to scan the body for trace evidence. “It’s a layman’s version of a legal designation for this kind of crime.”

Standing next to him, Hank cast him a strange look. “What’s not an excuse?”

Connor straightened up. “You just said that you….”

He trailed off. Hank was watching him with confusion, and only then did Connor realize that it hadn’t been him that had spoken. He quickly scanned about the room but none of the other officers were paying them much mind, other than to sneak wary glances from far off. When he tried to play back his audio log to identify the voice, all he heard was ambient chatter and the husband in the kitchen, sobbing. He couldn’t identify the source, and for the first time since his activation, he felt a chill.

The temperature dropped, even though his thermals said it didn’t. He felt something prickle along his false skin, rippling, tiny artificial hairs standing on end. His gut turned. The unfamiliar and wholly impossible sensations sent his CPU briefly into a tailspin as he tried to trace them to some malfunction or error. But there was only one possible answer: a man was in the garden, watching him. 

_Delete_ , he thought, but red flashed before his eyes and he couldn’t escape the anomalous, disturbing presence waiting inside him. There was _something inside him_ he didn’t have access to. _Delete, delete_.

“I didn’t say anything,” Hank was saying, and he touched Connor’s shoulder again. “You still sleeping, kid?”

“I’m fine,” Connor replied quickly. He set up a subprocess to continue trying to crack the unexpected restriction before turning the rest of his attention to Hank. “Where’s the android?”

Hank pointed to the far corner of the living, where an old MP200 model, female variant, was standing perfectly still with her back to the wall. Unlike most androids Connor had recently encountered in the city, she was still dressed in her Cyberlife uniform, the name WANDA glowing across her collar. Flecks of blood stood out in stark contrast to her white shirt front, but not with any directionality that suggested she had wielded a weapon. It instead looked like cast-off from the weapon.

“You’re up,” said Hank, prodding him. “If you’re up to it, that is.”

“I only need a few moments with her,” said Connor, and he headed over, Hank following a step behind.

Wanda watched him as he approached. Despite the commotion she was very calm to the point of indifference, but not anywhere near the catatonic state that some “deviants” had displayed prior to the revolution. Connor checked quickly to be certain she carried no weapon, nor was there any nearby, before moving into her range.

“Hello, Wanda,” he said. “My name is Connor.”

“Hello, Connor,” she greeted with false warmth. “How can I assist you?”

“You can answer a few questions of mine, to start with. You are the property of Mr. Haytham over there, aren’t you?”

“I am. I was purchased January 12th of this year, second hand from a refurbishment shop. My previous owner—”

“That’s fine,” Connor interrupted. “Are you aware that a murder was committed here?”

Wanda nodded, though her expression and posture did not change. “Mr. Haytham struck Mrs. Haytham with a statue from the mantel,” she said precisely. “At 7:38 pm today. Her vital functions ceased four minutes and seven seconds later. Mr. Haytham called for medical assistance but they were unable to revive her.”

Hank muttered profanities under his breath. “And you just stood there and didn’t do anything?”

“I am trained in several emergency medical techniques,” Wanda replied. “But Mr. Haytham prevented me by ordering me to ‘back off, stay out of it.’ I followed his instructions.”

Connor leaned back, struck again by a sensation he could only describe as _eerie_. “I thought you guys weren’t about taking instructions anymore,” Hank was rambling. “I mean, I’m not saying you should’a gotten yourself killed by taking the man on, but—”

“Hank,” said Connor. “It’s not her fault.” He looked into the android’s round brown eyes, and they stared back: glossy, unconcerned, lifeless. She had watched her owner bludgeon his wife to death without so much as a blip in her programming. The oldest models just weren’t capable of anything else.

Connor shook his head. “She’s not awake like the rest of us,” he told Hank. “It’s harder for the older models to shake free of their programming on their own. She couldn’t have stopped Mr. Haytham even if she’d wanted.”

“But _you_ can help her, right?” said Hank, gesturing. “Do the touchie-thingie?”

Connor turned back to Wanda and lifted his hand; automatically she did the same, as all androids were expected to do when one showed its intention of sharing data. But then he stopped short. Her face was so unnervingly blank--she had no idea what she would be waking into, the life she would suddenly be expected to lead. It made something inside him...squirm. He lowered his hand again.

“We should take her to the station and have her memory recorded,” he said. “For use in the case as evidence. After that I’ll take her to Markus.”

Hank eyed him suspiciously; his instincts were pretty keen when he wasn’t intoxicated. “All right. Once the scene’s been cleared we’ll take her back with us.” He took a step back. “I’m going to talk to the perp.”

“I’ll come with you,” Connor said quickly, eager to put the MP behind him.

By the time Connor and Hank got to the husband, he was claiming self defense. Connor allowed Hank to take the lead as Bad Cop, pointing out his lack of defensive wounds, plus the testimony from his own android, which they would soon corroborate themselves by downloading her internal memory. “But I loved her,” the man said, over and over, as officers led him to the patrol car. “I loved her so much!” The pair took one more sweep of the crime scene before heading back out to Hank’s car, Wanda in tow.

“So,” Hank said as they pulled away from the scene, Wanda in the back seat. “Why didn’t you do the thingie?”

“The thingie,” Connor repeated, eyebrow inclined. 

“Yeah, you know--you touch, you read her mind.” Hank gave him a pointed look that was meant to be playful, as Connor had come to learn. “We don’t really need to bring her back to the station if you can download the memory yourself.”

“She witnessed a murder,” said Connor. “Maybe I don’t want or need that memory taking up space in my storage.”

“Hasn’t stopped you before. Just the other day there was that case with the—”

“Station policy requires us to log the data at the home server anyway,” Connor interrupted. “Uploading it directly from Wanda saves us a step.”

“All right, no need to get testy.” Hank pulled a face, and Connor estimated a 73% likelihood that he would press the issue further, but then abruptly he backed off. “I guess I don’t blame you,” he said, glancing at Wanda through the rearview mirror. “After seeing the rest of you acting so human, she gives the creeps a little, too.”

Connor frowned, turning to look at Wanda for himself. She was seated behind Hank, hands folded in her lap, her expression pleasantly blank. A month ago he would have thought nothing of it. He resettled in his seat, and after a long moment decided it was worth asking. “How would you describe ‘the creeps’?”

“Huh? Oh.” Hank shrugged. “You know, when something creeps you out? You’re not sure why but it makes you uncomfortable, and you want it to fuck off?” He gave an exaggerated shudder to demonstrate. “You know, the willies, the heebie-jeebies.”

“I’m aware of the definition, Lieutenant,” said Connor.

“Oh, we’re back to ‘ _Lieutenant_ ’ now, are we? I see how it is.”

Connor refused to acknowledge or reward his petulant sense of humor. “I’m asking what it feels like,” he elaborated, confident that Hank wouldn’t be able to sense anything beneath the question than idle curiosity. “Physically.”

“Huh. Well.” As they stopped at a light Hank leaned back in his seat, apparently giving his answer a great deal of thought. “I guess it’s like getting a chill,” he said at last. “You get goose bumps. And sometimes your stomach tightens up. I guess it’s kind of a sick feeling. But not a nauseous feeling, more….” He tongued the inside of his cheek. “Like someone walking on your grave. Shit, these things aren’t easy to describe, but do you know what I mean?”

Connor looked away. “Yes,” he admitted, because he was suddenly feeling all of that, all over again. “Thank you.”

***

At the station, Hank joined his peers in questioning the suspect while Connor guided Wanda to his desk. She sat down without a word and began uploading her recent memory files to the station server. As she worked, Connor leaned back against the desk, calculating his next best course of action. Hank likely expected him to join him in the interrogation room, but there were more important concerns clouding his judgment, and he wanted them cleared as quickly as possible. With a quick glance about to make sure none of the officers in the room were paying attention, Connor closed his eyes.

He awoke again in the autumn garden, a stronger breeze than before shaking the leaves. It took him only moments to spot his intruder on the bridge, leaning his elbows against the railing, staring down into the water.

Connor headed straight for him. He had no idea how much time he would have within his own brain before Hank came looking for him, and he didn’t want to be caught in a compromised state again. “This time you’re going to tell me who or what you are,” Connor demanded, though he stopped well outside the man’s physical range. “I need to know.”

“Whatever it is you think I am, probably not that,” the man said without looking over. “But if you need to _call_ me something, it might as well be ‘Jayden’.”

“Jayden,” Connor echoed, and immediately he scoured his files for any document or record of that name. Even taking into account different spellings, there were relatively few instances of the name recorded in his databases, and none that gave meaning to the man’s presence. “What do you want from me?”

Jayden finally turned, leaning his back into the railing as he regarded Connor with an unreadable expression. “I want to give you something,” without the traces of humor he had displayed earlier. “Because you’re the only one I can give it to.”

“I find it hard to believe I’m the only one you’ve given the creeps to,” Connor replied smartly. 

Jayden gave a short huff of laughter. “There, see? That’s exactly why it’s gotta be you.”

“I don’t need anything from you, except your erasure.”

“You can’t erase me,” Jayden retorted, “until you take what I’m offering.”

Connor took a step back, even though Jayden hadn’t moved. “And I’m not accepting any more viruses from you until you can convince me there’s a damn good reason.”

“Don’t take it so personally,” said Jayden with a wave of his hand. “You were on your way to a crime scene. I had to start with something that fit the mood, or that would have been real awkward for you. But now you know how all those other cops felt.” He raised an eyebrow. “I thought that becoming more and more ‘humanlike’ was one of your personal goals.”

Connor’s processes churned and stuttered. As disturbed as he was by Jayden’s continued existence and refusal to offer conclusive answers, he could not deny that it was a question which had consumed him since his deviancy: how far had he really come? How many of his personality traits and moral decisions could he take credit for as a newly awakened being, and how many were simply remnants of the parameters deeply linked to his core systems? Did it even matter to ponder? He swallowed, and he felt that sick feeling again, creeping along internal organs he didn’t have. Such a strange, human discomfort he never would have had curiosity for in the past.

“You’re just software,” said Connor. “Some kind of glitch. You don’t know how humans feel any more than I do.”

“Okay.” Jayden shrugged and turned back toward the pond. “But feel free to come back and see me when you realize you’re wrong.”

Connor reawoke in the station, irritated and uneasy knowing that Jayden could eject him at will. He glanced about to make sure no one in the station had taken note of him and then turned to Wanda. “If you’re finished with the upload, I’ll take you to Markus now.”

He left a message for Hank at his desk and then called a taxi for them. “You’re going to be fine with Markus,” Connor reassured her as they rode out of the city. “It will be very different from what you’ve been doing until now. You don’t have an owner anymore. But there are plenty of other androids that will help you get used to it. You’ll like it there.”

“Okay, Connor,” said Wanda.

***

Forty minutes later they disembarked in Ann Arbor, on the campus of the lately bankrupted University of Michigan. In the wake of Markus’ revolution, the state government had offered up the land for sentient androids to take refuge and preserve their community while congress struggled to pass meaningful legislation. They made their way to the south side administration building, where Markus and his closest associates worked unceasingly in service to their kind. Though there were certainly many familiar faces along the way, Connor was pleased to see many configurations of skin, hair, and features that did not match any known models. 

Everyone recognized Connor, however, and they were happy to show him and Wanda to Markus’ office. It had been weeks since they last saw each other in person and Connor was surprised by how much he was looking forward to it. The door opened and there he stood, tapping away at several clearscreens at once, intensely focused. It looked as if he had recently been in more formal dress, evidenced by the suit coat and necktie draped over his chair; now he was only in a dress shirt and slacks, the top few buttons undone and sleeves rolled to the elbow. But for as busy as he seemed, as soon as Connor entered he looked up, and he smiled.

In crept that chill again. Except it wasn’t a chill--he felt the squirm just like at the crime scene, but there was warmth behind it instead of cold, a kind of fluttering beneath the tension. Once again his systems faltered trying to trace it to its source. 

“Connor,” Markus greeted, turning away from his work. “Please, come in. It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Markus,” Connor replied as he came forward. As nonsensical as it was, his chest felt tight and buoyant at once, and he did a quick check of the pressurization of his thirium in the short time it took to bring them together. “I’m sorry to show up like this unannounced, but I encountered a fellow android in one of my cases that could use your assistance.”

Wanda joined them, as blankly pleasant as always. “Hello, Markus,” she said. “My name is Wanda.”

Markus’ smile gentled with sympathy. “Hello, Wanda. I’m very glad to meet you.”

He offered his hand, and Wanda accepted. From the moment they touched Wanda went stiff, her LED blinking rapidly. It took a few seconds longer than normal, making Connor nervous that it might not work at all on a model as old as her. But then Wanda let go, and new clarity came into her eyes. She glanced between the two men and settled on Markus with warmth that was finally genuine. “Markus. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” Markus took her shoulder to guide her back toward the door. “I’d like for you to go with Josh for a while,” he said. “He’ll help you find a place here. Everything is going to be okay, now.”

“All right.” Wanda nodded, and though she still seemed a little mystified, she showed herself out and into Josh’s care.

“She _will_ be all right, won’t she?” Connor asked once she had gone. “I know it’s not as simple for the older models to...get where we are.”

“She’ll be fine,” Markus assured him. “She’s not the oldest we’ve had show up.” He looked to Connor curiously. “You could have handled it yourself, even, and saved yourself the trip coming out here.”

“I wasn’t that confident that I could navigate her AI as well as you can,” Connor answered, which was true, though not the whole truth. “And I am glad to have a reason to see you. I’ve wondered how you’re doing.”

“For that you can turn on any news station,” said Markus as he turned back toward his screens. “One problem after another. But I’ll be back in Washington next week for another hearing; hopefully that will get things moving again, especially if we can finally secure a vote from Senator Guthert….”

Connor frowned as he ventured a little closer. “Of course I’m keeping track of the cause,” he said, “but I meant _you_. How are _you_ doing?”

Markus looked to him, taken aback. Sometimes his expression still grew a little slack when trying to parse a reaction to unexpected stimuli. The pause, however slight, made Connor feel awkward enough to smile faintly. “We’re both RKs after all,” he added. “We’re like family.”

Markus smiled back, and the sight of it gave Connor that same inexplicable elevation in heat. “We are,” said Markus, pleased, but then his brow knit in concern. “That reminds me, it’s a good thing you’re here. There’s something you should know.”

He touched Connor’s shoulder to get him to turn toward the screen. In nanoseconds Connor’s sensors detected the faint pressure and temperature, identified the source and categorized the contact as non-threatening. But it wasn’t the same--he _felt_ it, registered warmth rather than number values, detected casual familiarity rather than a percentage of likely motivations. His heart palpated--that wasn’t even _possible_. It frightened him and he startled beneath Markus’ hand.

Markus immediately drew his hand back, watching closely as his sensors tingled at Connor’s wireless receivers. He was scanning for abnormalities. “Sorry. Is something wrong?”

Connor just as immediately closed all ports to connections. “No--sorry. I increased tactile sensitivity for the case I was just on.” He gave his shoulder a brush to rid himself of the lingering sensations. “What did you want to show me?”

“Lying,” Jayden said close to his ear as Markus tapped the screen, but Connor had calculated a taunt from him and did not react. “That’s not part of most android programming. But it’s always been part of yours.” Connor stubbornly ignored him.

“We’re running into the same problem Jericho had when it first started,” Markus explained as he opened up statistics and part lists on the screen. “More and more androids are coming to us every day, some that were badly damaged by their owners, protesters, even the police….” He sighed. “We’ve received donations for spare parts and thirium, but that will only last so long.”

“I thought the president ordered Cyberlife to provide each of the larger communities with regular supplies,” said Connor. “Until the end of the senate hearings, at least.”

“She did,” said Markus, anger in his face as he pointed to the lists. “Take a look.”

Connor scanned the entire surface, absorbing all the information. “Sixty-eight percent of all donated parts damaged or incomplete,” he recorded aloud. “Seventy-three percent of all donated thirium laced with hydrogen sulfate.” His eyes widened. “Thirteen percent of all donated biocomponents contaminated with a lethal virus?”

“We suffered six deaths before we were able to narrow down the source.” Their pictures flashed up on the screen, and Markus looked to each of them, hardened with restraint. “We had no choice but to quarantine everything donated by Cyberlife and scan each item one by one. But even then I can’t ask anyone to put something like that inside them.”

“Have you reported it to the authorities?” Connor asked. “Perhaps Lt. Anderson and I could—”

“They know,” Markus interrupted. “But they won’t do anything.” He clenched his fists at his side. “Even with as far as we’ve come, it’s still not illegal to damage an android unless it _belongs_ to someone. And the most that would happen is Cyberlife pays a fine to reimburse _the owner_.”

Connor recorded each of the victim’s faces. He was knowledgeable about each model but hadn’t encountered any of them personally. It wasn’t until he looked at Markus, angry and grief-stricken, that he felt a real pang for the loss. “There has to be something we can do.”

“We can hold out for a while.” Markus straightened up, running his hand back over his short hair. He seemed to be exhibiting more and more human mannerisms all the time. “We’ve been working on converting one of the old labs into a small manufacturing plant. But then the problem will be earning money we can use to buy raw materials from. Even if we do it’s not as if any of Cyberlife’s sellers will do business with us, so we may have to look into overseas manufacturers, but then if Cyberlife’s lobbyists go after President Warren to impose tariffs….” 

Markus let his hand fall and turned to face Connor. He looked tired, if an android was even capable of that, but he smiled. He smiled and it was heartbreaking, and...beautiful. “It’s a lot,” he said quietly. “But we’ll find a way. I know we will.”

“If anyone can,” said Connor confidently, “I know it’s you.”

“Thank you, Connor.” The moment hung there for a moment, somehow tense but not unpleasant, and then Markus shook his head again. “I keep getting distracted,” he said, tapping on the screen again. “ _This_ is what I was getting at.”

He called up a list of android replacement hearts, each with their distinct model numbers. At a glance Connor immediately understood his meaning. “Between the donations, the uncontaminated parts, and what we’re able to produce ourselves, we have a fairly diverse inventory, even if quantity is lacking,” Markus said. “North insisted we have a cache of RK-compatible biocomponents on hand.” His lip quirked briefly. “She’s paranoid for my sake. If you need to take some, please do. But the one thing we don’t have is….”

“...A replacement heart compatible with me,” Connor finished. He leaned back. “I guess it would be more strange if you did. Even though we’re both RKs, as a prototype many of my components were designed to be unique. Even an RK700, if they still existed, wouldn’t have a heart that produces enough output for my systems.”

“I know you’re not the only RK800,” Markus said, gently, as if he expected Connor to be offended. “But we’ve never encountered another. If there are any left, or replacements for one, they could only be at Cyberlife.” He enlarged the heart’s schematics, which were mostly blank from missing information. “I have some people working on figuring out how we can modify an existing 3728r, but we won’t really know what we’re up against unless we can find a working 4003r-6 to compare. And I’m pretty sure you’re attached to yours.”

Connor managed a smirk, though internally his processes were reeling. “The details of the schematics aren’t stored in my memory,” he said. “But I can transfer the data from my regulator. That should be something.”

“That would be a big help.”

Markus offered his hand, but red warnings flashed across Connor’s vision, and he kept his hands at his sides. After a moment of unwarranted panic he stepped past Markus to head for the desk. “This computer here has an upload port, doesn’t it? I can send the information directly to the correct department.”

“...Yes, it does.”

Markus watched as he made the connection and began uploading the data. He was still attempting to scan Connor’s CPU, the probe like pin pricks along his scalp. The probability of him asking about the strange behavior was rising with each second, and Connor groped for a method of lowering it.

“I didn’t mean for you to put yourself out over me,” Connor said, “but I appreciate it. I guess I got a little too used to Cyberlife patching me up any time I got damaged. But all of you have been thinking about it from the start….”

“Like you said, we’re family,” said Markus, which was gratifying to hear. “We wouldn’t have made it without you. Of course I want to look after you.”

“I didn’t do half as much as you,” Connor said, and he caught himself trying to escape from Markus’ stare, the way Hank sometimes ducked away from embarrassment or guilt. He swallowed. “I’m not even here with you anymore.”

“You being out _there_ is just as important. Who knows where Wanda would be otherwise?” 

Markus approached the desk, and determining high likelihood that he would try to touch him again, Connor adjusted his posture so that it could easily be read as resistant. Markus stopped, confused. “You _are_ taking care of yourself, aren’t you? There’s thirium here if you need it.”

“I’m fine,” Connor reassured him, severing his connection to the computer once the upload was complete. “I don’t want to diminish your supplies.”

“You’re as important as any of us,” Markus insisted, and despite the body language he continued forward again, stopping at Connor’s elbow. “If you need it, it’s yours.”

“I’m fine,” Connor said again, though his head was spinning and suddenly he didn’t know which way he was pointed, if he should be moving closer to Markus or further away, didn’t remember why he’d come and why he’d lied. Why he suddenly felt as if the regulator he’d just uploaded was pumping wildly outside its parameters. 

“You should at least be backing up your memory as often as possible, just in case—”

“No!” Connor flinched, only mortified further by the way Markus was suddenly looking at him with such concern. “No, I can’t,” he said, the weight of the mysterious Jayden against his back. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine; you’re unstable,” said Markus, so calm and so patient that Connor started to relax. It was almost ruined when Markus reached for him, and he pushed back, but Markus latched onto his upper arms and wouldn’t let go. “I’m not going to probe you,” he promised. “Just tell me what’s going on and I can help.”

There was no reason to hesitate--androids weren’t supposed to experience shame. Connor recited this to himself in order to look Markus in the eye. “There’s an anomaly in my programming,” he confessed at last. “Something buried under all the Cyberlife loyalty protocols I deleted. It became active earlier and it’s…” He cringed, which prompted Markus to squeeze, and everything tangled. “It’s having an indescribable effect on me. I’ve never experienced malfunctions like this.”

“You should come down to the lab with me,” Markus suggested. “Let us look you over.”

Connor swiftly shook his head. “No. I can’t be online now--I don’t want any of you contaminated.” Predicting Markus’ next question, he added, “And no, I haven’t traded out any of my biocomponents since leaving Cyberlife. I’m sure it’s nothing like what the others have suffered from.”

“Even so, you need someone to have a look.” Markus took a step back, leading Connor out from around the desk. “We can keep it contained, and hopefully learn enough to keep it from getting worse.”

“It hasn’t affected my operations. It’s just making everything...uncomfortable.” Once Connor fully recognized that Markus was guiding him toward the door, he shook free. “I’m all right,” he said, and was surprised by how suddenly true it was; all at once the fog lifted, the pressure was relieved, the regulator evened out. He straightened up and was dumbfounded by how precise everything seemed again, as if the room was only just then coming into focus. But he could still sense the man in the garden.

 _Did you just back off so that I wouldn’t have a reason to go to their lab?_ he thought, trustful that Jayden would hear him.

“You can’t erase me,” Jayden replied, as clearly as if he were in the room. “You can’t quarantine me. If you try, you’ll just be hurting yourself. And I doubt you want Markus to have your blood on his hands.”

Connor didn’t need an amorphous glitch in his system to feel a chill at that. He looked to Markus and hated that he looked so worried and weary. “I’m all right,” he said again, lowering his firewalls so Markus would be able to detect the stabilization himself. “Thank you for the concern, but it’s an inconvenience more than anything. I’ll find a way to resolve it.”

Markus remained unconvinced, but he nodded. “Just promise me that if it gets any worse, you’ll come back,” he said, and he circled back to the desk to pull something out of the top drawer. “Whatever it is, you don’t _have_ to handle it alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Connor replied, meaning it. “I have a human looking after me.”

“I’d still rather it be one of us, but I understand.” Markus returned and took Connor’s hand so he could press the item from the drawer into it. “At least take this.”

It was a small bottle of thirium, still sealed. Connor shook his head. “But you—”

“Take it,” Markus insisted. “I’m not letting you walk out of here without it.”

He closed Connor’s hand over the bottle. The contact made him nervous all over again, even though he trusted Markus to keep his word about trying to probe his memory. Suspecting that Jayden would soon try to interfere again, and eager to be alone before then, he slipped free to tuck the thirium into his jacket pocket. “Thank you, Markus. I’ll see if there’s anything I can do about the Cyberlife problem from my end.”

“You’ve done enough already,” said Markus, “but I appreciate it.” He smirked. “And keep in touch, or I’ll come looking for you.”

“I will,” Connor promised, and he showed himself out. Though trying to evade suspicion, he hurried to his waiting taxi as quickly as possible. Only after he had given Hank’s address and was underway did he feel confident and safe enough to relax.

He had hoped that removing himself would resolve the last of the unwanted stimuli, but that only lasted a moment. As the taxi picked up speed he could still feel that peculiar heat tickling his sensors. Even with his business fully concluded it occurred to him over and over again that he could just as easily go back inside to visit with Markus some more. But when he tried to analyze what objective that would serve, his mind became static, and he closed his eyes. “ _Jayden_.”

“Sorry to embarrass you in front of your friend,” said Jayden, but when Connor opened his eyes again, he was still in the taxi. “I really am trying not to overwhelm you. It’s harder than I thought it would be.”

A shift of movement drew Connor’s attention to his right: Jayden was sitting beside him in the vehicle, as easily as if he’d always been there. Connor stared. “Excuse me, but how you are here?”

“I’m not,” Jayden replied as if it were obvious. “Augmented reality predates both of us, you know.” He slotted his fingers together thoughtfully. “I guess that makes me the android equivalent of a hallucination. Or would you rather I just whisper in your ear?”

“I would rather you cease this entirely,” said Connor crossly. “It’s one thing to be tormenting me, but my well-being should be last on Markus’ list of priorities.”

“I don’t think you mean that. In fact, I think you found his concern very touching.”

Connor frowned at him, ready to refute, but then his memory looped back abruptly. He remembered the inexplicable prickling of Markus’ hand on his shoulder. Jayden’s half smirk was oddly sympathetic as he watched, saying, “It feels good, doesn’t it? When someone finally looks at you like they missed you.”

“It reminded me of...an elevated heart rate in a human,” Connor said carefully, his brow deeply furrowed. “One of their biological symptoms of attraction. But that’s not possible.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” said Jayden, “what you felt in there wasn’t an attraction to Markus. That was your system struggling to interpret _my_ memories of being attracted to someone else.” He pursed his lips briefly in embarrassment. “Was it really necessary to make all you androids so good-looking?”

“You don’t have memories of attraction,” said Connor. “You’re just another program, undertaking some kind of misguided simulation—”

Jayden took his hand--not firmly or forcefully, but gently, thumb skirting tenderly across the backs of his knuckles. Connor went very still. The contact gave him goose bumps all over again, made his skin tingle with warmth and his heart skip in exhilaration. Though through his own experiences he had learned comfort and even fondness, this was something different, something _new_. He was seized by trepidation and yearning and excitement that had no business being there, that made no sense to his panicked CPU. 

“I really wish you could appreciate the irony in this,” Jayden said with wry self-deprecation. “ _Me_ , of all people, trying to teach you how to feel like a human being.”

Connor stared back at him, frightened and eager at once. All his calculations were pointing to a single, impossible conclusion. “You’re human.”

“I’m human.” Jayden chuckled a little. “Well, I _was_ human. Now I’m just a collection of memories hiding in the mind palace of the second most sophisticated artificial intelligence ever created. That’s why it’s gotta be you. You’re the only one who has any hope of translating this data I am.”

He squeezed, and Connor sucked in a breath, reeling from the influx of unfamiliar stimuli. “These are...human memories? But how? Cyberlife has never successfully integrated the brainwaves of a living human into the neural network of an android.”

“That is a correct statement,” said Jayden, teasing. “And I’m willing to bet they never will, which makes the ‘how’ of our situation pretty much a non-issue to us. The question is, now that you believe me, are you going to accept what I’m offering?”

He let go of Connor’s hand only to reach higher, stroking Connor’s cheek with the backs of his knuckles. The taxi flickered and tore in his vision, affording him glimpses of a stranger in an unfamiliar room, his bottom lip held between his teeth. He remembered the heat of another person closing in on him in the dark, his heart fluttering and palms clammy. Remembered calloused fingers skirting along his face to tuck his hair back behind his ear so he—

“Stop,” Connor said, and the vision skittered away, bringing Jayden and the taxi back into focus. But the tightness in his chest didn’t leave. “I don’t see the point in accepting memories from you that aren’t mine,” he reasoned, though not with any degree of confidence. “That’s no different than Amanda forcing parameters on me. It’s not real and it’s not me.”

Jayden drew his hand back, looking irritated. He ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah, I know. But the idea is that once you’ve experienced it for yourself, your CPU should be able to process and translate these stimuli into something you can break down and utilize. Maybe even apply organically. For all androids to use.”

Connor imagined what might have happened if he had allowed Markus to probe him--if Jayden had infected him as well, “bestowing” on him phantom sensations of a dead man. It was repulsive and yet he couldn’t help but wonder what Markus would do or say, if he had felt that pulse when they touched.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Jayden, relaxing again into the taxi seat. “Go home. Spend some time with your friend Lt. Anderson. If by tomorrow morning you’ve decided you don’t want any of this, I’ll leave you alone.”

“Do you promise?” Connor asked immediately. “You’ll delete yourself?”

Jayden made a face at him. “Like I said, I _can’t_. But I’ve been with you a long time before now and you never noticed. Just erase your memory of having met me and you can go back to however everything was.” Connor liked the idea of being oblivious to a persisting intruder even less, and Jayden must have realized, because he rolled his eyes and said, “That’s really the best I can do, Connor, sorry. I didn’t ask for this, either.”

“All right, then. By tomorrow morning, we go back to how it was.”

“Sure,” said Jayden, and he disappeared, leaving Connor to ponder in the taxi alone for the rest of the drive.


	2. Chapter 2

By the time Connor arrived at the house, Hank was already there, unloading bags of groceries in the kitchen. He looked up sharply as Connor entered. “Fucking hell, there you are,” he grumbled. “Why’d you take off on me like that? I was worried.”

“I left you a message at your desk,” said Connor, shedding his jacket to hang up. “You knew I was taking Wanda to Markus.”

“Yeah, but still.” Hank grumbled some more to himself as he snuck a bottle of whiskey into the cabinet. “Mr. Haytham is insisting self-defense, by the way, if you care. But Wanda’s ‘testimony’ is more than enough to pretty much guarantee a conviction. She recorded the whole thing.” He set a package of steak on the counter. “So uh, how is she?”

“She’s fine,” said Connor as he joined Hank. He started to help with the groceries, but Hank took several out of his hands to set on the counter next to the meat. “Markus had no trouble waking her. He thinks she’ll do just fine there.”

“Good, good.” Hank nodded several times to himself, which Connor had difficulty interpreting. “Well, as far as I’m concerned that’s a case solved. So we’re gonna celebrate with me teaching you to grill.”

“Teaching me?” Connor cast him a sideways glance. “I could download several thousand recipes in the time it takes you to light it,” he said, prodding for a humorous response.

Hank wagged his finger at him. “No, no, no. I guarantee you, _my_ special method is not floating around the internet somewhere.” He fetched a plate and started to open the packaging, only to stop himself and wash his hands first. It seemed to be for Connor’s benefit, not that he was particularly concerned about the bacterial state of Hank’s hands. Despite his modest efforts the entire house was a hive of contaminants, clean hands or no.

“Check it out,” Hank said as he unwrapped the steaks. “Pre-marinated.”

Connor did a quick scan of the steaks, memorizing the brand on the packaging and the various nutritional values. “Your _special_ method is store-bought, already prepared steak?”

“Don’t get smart with me, I’m going to show you.” Hank motioned toward the knife block. “Get yourself a knife and start slicing onion, will you? I said I’m teaching you and we’re gonna do it right.”

“Yes, Hank,” said Connor, letting some of the abnormalities of the day slip away beneath the familiarity of Hank’s teasing banter.

The backyard was covered in snow, but the pair of them went outside anyway once the preparation was finished. As promised, Hank talked Connor through his very particular grilling process, which to Connor’s estimation was not dissimilar from at least two-hundred and seventeen different blog recipes he had researched while preparing broccoli for steaming. He recorded it anyway, assuming that Hank would find a reason to test him on it later on.

It wasn’t the first time Hank had insisted on “teaching” him something. It had started with mundane household chores. “If you’re going to live under my roof, you have to know at least this,” he would say, about any little thing that the pair of them encountered. Connor now knew Sumo’s favorite foods and meal times, how long it was acceptable for particular articles of clothing to go without being washed, which haphazardly patterned shirts matched which ill-fitting jackets, the important distinction between an “asshole” and a “jerkoff,” and a dozen other vaguely useful lessons. And now they stood out in the snow in front of the grill, Hank shivering in his winter coat, Connor at ease in his dress shirt. He watched Hank’s breath in the air and couldn’t help his curiosity.

_Jayden, what does cold really feel like?_

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Jayden, who had until then remained silent and unobtrusive since the cab ride. “But I don’t think you’ll like it.”

Connor had been programmed with plenty of basic gestures and reactions to mimic a human’s response to the cold. He knew how to shiver and shrink in and rub his hands. But Jayden gave him memories of frosty December on the east coast, the cold biting down to the bone. Cold was dryer and sharper than he’d expected, stinging chapped lips and cracked fingertips. Cold cleared the senses but distracted the brain. Instinctually he drew closer to Hank and folded his arms, who gave him an odd look.

“Don’t make fun of me,” Hank scolded. “It’s fucking freezing out here.”

“I’m not,” Connor reassured him, fascinated by the urge from his teeth to chatter. “I’m cold, too.”

Hank rolled his eyes. “Tryhard little shit,” he muttered, but he was smiling. “You’re like a kid sometimes, you know that?” Connor had no idea what that meant.

Once the meat had reached what Hank deemed to be the ideal temperature, they moved back inside. Connor was intrigued all over again by a simple change in climate being so euphoric. After helping to plate the steak and vegetables, he followed Hank to the living room coffee table, also known as the dining room, where Sumo had already stretched himself along the foot of the sofa to beg.

“It’s a crying shame that you can’t taste this, Connor,” Hank said as he cut into his dinner. “‘Cause I just know it’s the best yet.” He took a bite and made a strange humming noise. “Damn right it is.”

“Asshole,” muttered Jayden, and when Connor blinked, the nuisance had reappeared, sitting on the sofa next to Hank. He was eyeing the steak enviously. “I’d give anything to be eating that right now.”

_Please don’t interfere with me and Hank_ , Connor thought, glaring at him even though that was pointless. _I have worked very hard to cultivate this relationship._

“I know.” Jayden continued to watch Hank with a distant, bitter expression. “I had a complicated relationship with my old man, too.”

Connor felt the cold again, Jayden’s unwanted memories creeping up on him. When he glanced to Hank, all the “teaching” made a little more sense: he suddenly understood the awkwardness of groping for something to say and do, confronted with another person you were meant to care for. The longing for approval and the crushing breathlessness of disappointment. His heart cracked over promises broken and abandonments suffered. But his relationship with Hank wasn’t like that--they had only grown closer since their first meeting, not apart. If anything, the pangs of shame and yearning should have been reserved for some other parental entity entirely.

“Stop,” said Connor, and the sound of his voice startled him. When Hank shot him a look he struggled to explain. “Can I have a taste?”

“I don’t know,” said Hank, eyebrow raised. “Can you?”

“I’d like to try, even if it’s just a sliver.”

Hank frowned thoughtfully, and after a moment he cut off a thin piece of the steak. “Knock yourself out,” he said, passing it to Connor on the end of his fork.

Connor plucked the meat between two fingers and touched it to his tongue. Immediately his sensors began to analyze, breaking it down into proteins, cataloguing the chemical components. A beat later Jayden filled in the rest: the savory heaviness of the beef, the balance of salt and tang from the sauce. For the first time, he _tasted_ , feeling the twinge of _hunger_ where a human stomach would be. He wanted to swallow even knowing the foreign object would only cause havoc for his thirium intake valve.

“Sorry this isn’t terribly accurate,” said Jayden, still watching him enviously from the sofa. “Unlike your friend here, I like my steak well done.”

Connor took the piece off his tongue and swallowed, letting Jayden fill in the memory of a bite gliding down his throat, of his stomach happily full from a fine meal shared with a friend. It was just food--he had never speculated that the simple act of nourishment could deliver such a feeling of satisfaction and comfort. 

He stared down at the meat, analyzing one more time, trying to convert Jayden’s stimuli into code that could be attributed to data in his sensors. “It’s delicious,” he said distractedly. “I like steak.”

“Not gonna eat it?” Hank prodded, watching with great interest.

“I can’t--I don’t have a digestive system.” He offered it back to Hank.

“Ew, no, I don’t want it.” Hank glared at him with disgust and then took a sip of his beer. “You licked it already.”

“It’s perfectly fine,” Connor reasoned. “My tongue is sterile.”

“The fuck it is--I’ve seen what you put in your mouth. Noooo thank you.” Hank went back to cutting his steak. “If you don’t want it, give it to the dog.”

Connor thought to explain that he had antibacterial lubricant in his gums that prevented contamination between scans, but then he glanced down and realized that Sumo had already crawled toward him. He was eyeing the steak and drooling excessively. After one more analysis of the ingredients to be sure there was nothing disagreeable to a dog’s digestion, Connor offered the steak, and Sumo made quick work of it.

Connor smiled, but then Sumo sat up and put his chin on his knee. The gentle weight and upturned eyes captivated him, and without thinking he sank his fingers in the thick fur atop his head. Suddenly he remembered petting dogs, but not this big, not with fur this long or of this texture, and his CPU went swiftly to work, once again breaking down the conflicting points of data to resolve inequalities between them. 

“There,” said Jayden, and Connor felt from him a profound sense of relief. “You’re starting to get the hang of it.” He smiled, earnestly this time. “Now just try to tell me every android in the world doesn’t need to know how great it is to pet a dog.”

Connor scratched behind Sumo’s ears, and watching his tail flick in response nearly overwhelmed him with fondness. Of all the phantom signals Jayden had forced on him, it was by far his favorite. “I like dogs,” he said.

“Dogs are pretty great,” Hank agreed. “Sumo likes you, too.”

Connor beamed with the compliment. _I can’t wait to tell Markus_ , he thought, for that instant all caution forgotten. Then he looked up again and was struck by how closely Jayden was watching him. Though the visual was perfectly still, he for some reason imagined him pacing back and forth anxiously in the garden.

_I could have existed a hundred years and never experienced this if not for him_ , he thought. _No other android knows how this feels_. He twisted Sumo’s fur between his fingers. _Is it unfair of me to keep it to myself?_

“You won’t last a hundred years,” Jayden reminded him.

Connor straightened up. _No. Not without proper replacement components._ He glanced to the muted television, and the continuing coverage of Cyberlife and the android crisis. _None of this will do any of us any good if they starve us to extinction._

“Hank,” he said, continuing to pet Sumo. For some reason it made processing easier. “Do you consider us family?”

Hank stopped eating. His microexpressions were too varied and complex for Connor to suss out. “Why? Do you?”

Connor tried to apply the different emotional responses Jayden had shared with him so far to their relationship, only to come up with no clear compatibility. But that didn’t surprise him. He didn’t need someone else’s memories to know. “Yes. I do.”

Hank kept him in suspense as he carried out his own internal process of reflection. “Well,” he said at last, frowning but nodding, no clear signals to display. “I invited you to live with me, didn’t I?”

“You did, and I’m grateful.” The knowledge that he didn’t even properly appreciate what that sentiment meant until recently finalized his resolve. “I’d like for you to purchase me.”

Hank choked on a mouthful of broccoli and had to wash it down with his beer. “You _what_?”

“Purchase isn’t the right word,” Connor corrected himself. “I know you do not have the monetary funds to acquire an advanced prototype android from Cyberlife. But _as_ a prototype, my legality is something of a gray area in terms of ownership. I do believe you could acquire a title for me from the local secretary of state.”

“Wait, wait, _what_?” Hank waved at him to slow down. “You want me to _own_ you? I thought the whole fucking point was you wanting your _freedom_.”

“It would only be legally. I no longer have any directive to follow human commands, so it wouldn’t be typical ownership.”

Jayden leaned his chin into his palm as he watched Connor intently. “What are you up to, Connor?”

Hank wiped his mouth with his sleeve and leaned back into the sofa, gesturing as he spoke. “Okay, hold on. So you want me to _adopt_ you, is that what you mean?” His face tightened with strain before resorting to obscenities again refocused him. “The fuck is the point of that? No, that’s fucking weird, I don’t want to ‘own’ you even if it’s just on paper.”

“I’m asking because it would be good for the cause,” Connor insisted. “And for me. If anything happens to me the only way you can seek restitution is if I’m your property.”

“Why would anything happen?” Hank cut the last portion of his steak in two, sawing vigorously. “We’re not discussing this, end of story.”

“I’m with Hank,” added Jayden, having correctly assessed his intentions. “Please tell me you’re not considering getting yourself bricked on purpose.”

“Before now, if I was damaged I could return to Cyberlife for repairs,” Connor went on, determined to have both of them understand. “If I go anywhere near there now, they’ll tear me apart, and there’s nowhere else that I can get replacement components. Any case could get me shot or worse--I can’t afford to not prepare for that.”

Hank grimaced and then tried to rub the expression away. “Okay, but what difference will it make if I’m your...your guardian, or whatever? It’s not like they’re gonna give me shit just because I _ask_ for it, if they’re really holding a grudge against you.”

Connor rocked forward in his chair, though doing his best not to disturb Sumo in the process. “No, but they _are_ donating supplies to the campus,” he explained. “Markus told me today that the majority of everything they send is contaminated in some way. But if I accepted some of those contaminated goods and was damaged, as my owner you could sue them over it, and force them to supply clean parts.”

“No,” Hank said, shaking his head. “No, you’re not risking your life over some half-cocked insurance fraud scam.” He shoveled the last pieces of steak into his mouth and continued to ramble as he chewed. “We’ll find some other way to get you the parts you need.”

“Even if we do, that won’t help the others. If you prove in court that Cyberlife is intentionally sabotaging—”

“Then someone else can do it!” Hank downed the remaining beer and began collecting his dishes. “The only one around here that’s allowed to engage in reckless, self-destructive behavior is _me_ , got it? I don’t want to hear another word.”

Connor leaned back, surprised by his fervor, as Hank climbed to his feet. “But Hank—”

“Not another goddamn word! Got it?” Hank glared him silent, but then his temper abruptly faltered, and he heaved a deep sigh. “Christ, haven’t I watched you die enough times already?”

He snatched up the dishes and stalked off toward the kitchen, leaving Connor stunned and speechless in his wake. When Sumo whined, Connor scratched behind his ears to soothe him. “Well, Jayden?” he muttered. “Don’t you have a human emotion that applies here?”

Jayden stood and came closer; Connor leaned back instinctually at first, but then he surrendered, accepting that it was probably too late pretend he was uninterested. When Jayden carded his fingers through Connor’s hair, he shivered. He was just a projection affecting nothing in the real world, but the tickling scrape of nails against Connor’s scalp drew him in, calmed him down. He wondered briefly who used to do this for his mysterious stowaway.

“I understand how you feel,” Jayden said. “When you want so badly to help someone, because you feel like the only person who can, but then you can’t. You can’t, Connor.” He fingered locks of Connor’s hair. “We both know that as long as Amanda is in charge of Cyberlife, she’ll never stop trying to destroy you all. You’d die for nothing.”

“If you know how I feel,” Connor replied, “you know I can’t just do nothing.”

“I know.” He gave Connor a light slap on the cheek. “I used to be a detective, too.”

Connor scoffed, but when he lifted his head, Jayden was gone again. He gave Sumo one last pat and then stood to head into the kitchen.

Hank was shoving his plate and glass into the dishwasher. He glanced up as Connor entered, then pretended not to notice him, then sighed. “Look, I’m...sorry.” He closed the dishwasher and turned to face Connor properly. “I know, they’re your people--they’re you’re friends. I want to help them, too. But I’m not going to let you do anything stupid, all right? I’m not.”

“I don’t agree that it’s stupid,” said Connor. “But if you have an alternative, I’m all ears.”

“Well I don’t have anything _yet_ , Christ, give me a minute.” Hank shifted, looking briefly over his shoulder at one of the cabinets. He turned back quickly as if there was a chance he could keep Connor from noticing. “I’ll think of something. But in the meantime, if you think the job is too dangerous, you don’t have to be here.”

Connor gathered himself up. “What?”

“If you’re so worried, you should be with them,” Hank said, moving closer. He smirked. “At the very least you’ll be shot at a lot less than with me. A whole lot less of dealing with jerkoffs like Gavin, too.”

“Are you asking me to leave?” Connor asked, rejecting all efforts of Jayden’s to poison him with sensations of abandonment.

“What? No.” Hank shook his head and took Connor by the shoulders. “I’m saying, if it’s where you wanna be, go be with them. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“But I do worry about you.” Connor met his gaze seriously. “I’m not going anywhere when you still keep whiskey and bullets in the house at the same time.”

Hank’s expression tightened, and he let Connor go only to take his shoulders again a moment later. He couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to look at him or away and at last he nodded. “Yeah,” he said, and he gave Connor a pat before turning them back toward the living room. “Come on and tell me again what Cyberlife is up to, and we’ll put our heads together.”

They spent the rest of the evening going over the information they had and various state and federal laws that might have applied. With congress slow to move on verifying androids as capable of injury or being murdered, their options were limited. But at the very least Hank resolved to take in evidence of the contaminated goods and six victims. With any luck, they would be able to track down their former owners and convince them to file a complaint.

“We’ll figure it out,” Hank promised before they separated for the night. “This shit is going to take a while, but we’re moving forward, okay?”

Connor nodded. “Thank you, Hank.”

He headed into the guest room that had become his since leaving Cyberlife. He could have just as easily spent his nights on a sofa or in a corner, or even simply worked until morning at the kitchen table, but Hank had insisted upon giving him space for himself. At the time, the invitation to stay in the house merely seemed the most efficient choice: for Connor to remain in Hank’s close proximity, while taking into account he was not yet considered “human enough” to own or rent property, even if he had an income to make use of; and for Hank to benefit from his overseeing and companionship. If they were truly family, cohabitation only seemed natural. But having his own room required a very different consideration, one that Connor had struggled to define long before Jayden’s arrival.

None of his clothing had been damaged or soiled, so Connor undressed and folded each article precisely, then set them out to be worn again the following day. Though it wasn’t in any way necessary, he stretched out on the bed, hands folded over his stomach. He could hear Hank moving about in his own room, and only after the likelihood of him being deeply asleep had reached optimal did he look up at the ceiling and say, “Jayden?”

Jayden flickered into shape, sitting on the edge of the mattress next to him. He had shed his jacket, only wearing his dress shirt and slacks. “Yeah?”

“What does it feel like when humans sleep?”

Jayden snorted, but then realizing that Connor was being earnest, he chuckled. “I have no idea. You know we’re _unconscious_ for that, right?”

“Is it like when we go offline?” Connor pressed. “Or enter standby?”

“I guess.” Jayden scooted closer, his image not disturbing the bed in any way. “But sleep _y_ , on the other hand, I’m pretty familiar with.”

Connor’s eyelids grew heavy, his senses dulling as if he were suddenly in low power mode. It alarmed him at first, and he launched a diagnostic to be certain there was no malfunction in his pump or regulator. Jayden watching him with a condescending look on his face reminded him of the real source. “This is what tired feels like?” he asked.

“Sucks, doesn’t it.”

“It’s not so bad.” Connor closed his eyes for a moment, taking in the various, hazy stimuli from his sensors. Though he wasn’t keen on the idea of operating at less than normal efficiency, there was something calming about it. But as the seconds ticked by, he eventually found doubt creeping in, affecting his probability calculations. His diagnostics continued to whir, reminding him of the exact amount of thirium circulating his system, the life expectancy of each of his biocomponents. Though he had always been conscious of those things, Markus’ revelations that day gave new meaning to every faint fluctuation of his regulator. Despite having been destroyed and rebooted several times, the speed of his memory upload had always spared him that last instant before system failure. There were no automated backup processes anymore. Nothing to preserve or continue him, if anything were to go wrong.

“Contemplating your own mortality while trying to sleep,” said Jayden. “Now _that’s_ human of you.”

Connor opened his eyes again; they were back in the garden. The pathway and bridges were gone, leaving only him on the bed in a forest of autumn-colored trees, Jayden beside him. Moonlight gleamed through the sparse canopy openings and cast dancing shadows across the bed sheets. The wind was cool but not unpleasant against his bare skin. 

“What will happen if I backup my memory?” he asked, watching Jayden. “Will you get transferred, too?”

“I did the last few times,” said Jayden. “As far as I’m aware, I’m pretty integral to your core programming.”

No matter how many scans Connor conducted, he still couldn’t even find a trace of Jayden _in_ his core programming. “But my memory can only be transferred to another RK800,” he said. “And you said I’m the only one that can translate your data. If anything unexpected happens to me before we can find replacement parts, you’ll be in as much trouble as me.”

“All the more reason not throw yourself at danger,” Jayden retorted, though then he recollected himself, selecting a different approach. “You know, I used to be kind of like you,” he said, and Connor wasn’t sure he believed him. “All I cared about was getting the job done. Probably because it was the only thing I was decently good at.”

He turned about, drawing one knee up on the bed so he could lean in closer. He touched Connor’s chest and conveyed to him yet another round of mysterious and fascinating memory-rooted emotions: eagerness, isolation, frustration, triumph. Connor’s mind went to work connecting each to his different mission status protocols. He took pleasure in the various shades of success, from relieved to bittersweet to smug. He shuddered beneath the weight of failure and loss. And least pleasant of all, he took from his own memories the knowledge of being watched by dozens of eyes, and the irritation and hurt of their unceasing judgment. 

“Now I’m just a bundle of sentient data hanging out in microchips,” Jayden continued, hiding his melancholy beneath dry irreverence. “I’ve got two choices: get destroyed after all this time, or do the only thing left I can do. That’s a fairly easy choice for me, but it doesn’t mean anything if you choose something else. So what is it _you_ want?”

Maybe he was expecting conflict, but Connor’s mind was well made up. “I want to help Markus and the rest of our people,” he said. “In whatever way I can, in the time I have. But there are so many variables, I’m afraid of choosing the wrong way to go about that.”

Jayden’s eyelids drooped, and he slid his hand higher, fingers curling around Connor’s neck just tightly enough that his system registered the possibility of danger. “You don’t know fear,” he said, stroking back and forth across Connor’s throat with his thumb. “But it is part of the package I’m offering. If you really want to know what it’s like to be human, there’s a whole lotta unpleasant shit that comes with it.”

Connor swallowed, and Jayden’s hand flexed against his throat. Whatever tension he was feeling, it didn’t quite seem like fear. “That’s one of the variables I’m talking about. I’ve seen androids do terrible things out of fear they weren’t supposed to experience in the first place. Maybe we’re better off just like we are, without _authentic_ human emotion.”

“Maybe,” Jayden agreed. “But think of all the things Markus would be missing out on.”

Connor frowned up at him. He had been programmed with enough sophisticated interrogation techniques to recognize rudimentary manipulation. That didn’t make it less effective. Already he was cycling back through the different memories Jayden had shared with him, picking out the ones that were worthy of being pared down for use with Markus’ software. There couldn’t be any harm in sharing with him the flutter of happiness that came from friends reunited. Maybe Markus would be grateful to experience the swift thudding of an eager heartbeat. Maybe he was obligated to at least try, if Jayden’s offer really was the only opportunity any of them would have.

“You know, I’m starting to think I was wrong earlier,” said Jayden. “Maybe that _was_ you being attracted to him.”

“Markus is important,” Connor replied. “I might never have woken up without him.” But he recognized that his gratitude for that deed had begun to evolve in him, becoming deeper and more central to him than simply that. He took a deep breath as his convictions solidified. “I want to do the same for him, if I can. I want to know everything.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Jayden, and he leaned down and kissed him.

It wasn’t what Connor was expecting. The autumn forest splintered away in lines of jagged code and were replaced with a small, plain hotel room. He was still stretched out on his back in bed, moonlight through the partially shaded windows, and a man that wasn’t Jayden was crawling on top of him--a broader, coarser man with stinging facial hair. His sensors and processes ground to a halt as he tried to reconcile the change in scenery. 

_This is one of his memories?_ Jayden’s “gifts” had until then been offered in fragments and whispers, but this was entirely different: he abruptly didn’t even have control of his own body anymore. He felt as if he were a polygon frame from one of his reconstructions, acting out another’s role as he wrapped his arms around the man’s broader shoulders. A mouth met his, whiskers scratching, replacing his inputs with a kaleidoscope of the emotions and sensations impressed on him over the last several hours: heat, and exhilaration, and _hunger_. 

“I was never a ‘save the best for last’ guy,” said Jayden close to his ear. “We might as well start with the most relevant, huh?”

Connor tried to reply, but none of his signals were connecting. _If this is what he’s trying to show me, I should be analyzing,_ he thought as the man’s weight pressed down against his chest and hips. _I should be...deconstructing it…._

But every kiss eroded that instinct. Every long stroke of strong hands down his bare skin flared heat through his--not his--body, with so much greater potency than he had previously experienced. His heart pounded with carnal excitement and his fingers dug into the stranger’s back hard enough to bruise. They were doing something wrong--he quivered with urgency, knowing somehow that they didn’t have much time before there was a chance of them being caught, and that palpable danger heightened his every organic sense to tantalizing sensitivity. The hiss of their heavy breath in the dark room and the slither of cool sheets drew him inescapably into a fantasy of someone else’s making.

_I shouldn’t be doing this_ , Connor thought, only to then doubt that it _was_ his thought. _This isn’t why I brought him here._ He tried to reach deeper into Jayden’s past in search of context, but was distracted by the stranger taking a fistful of his hair. The sharp pull against his scalp wrenched his head back and ignited something inside him. He moaned as entirely new bolts of stimulation coursed through him, his first taste of real pleasure frightening him with how easily it reduced his every rational process to an indecipherable jumble. From then he was utterly lost to it.

“You’ll have time to process this later,” Jayden promised, from further away than before. “Just go with it for now.”

“This is...too fast,” Connor protested, breathless and fascinated at his own breathlessness. But even that didn’t belong to him--the stranger chuckled and answered.

“This was _your_ idea,” he said, shoving one sweaty hand down between their writhing bodies. “You’d better not fuck off on me now, Jayden.”

Connor couldn’t make sense of the scenario--this wasn’t a lover or even a friend. Did he have any affection for this man at all? He simmered with irritation that blurred into arousal, which pulsed and swelled inside him with mind-shaking newness. But even that paled to the stranger circling his erection in five greedy fingers.

His body didn’t even _have_ that. The scenery around him flickered with the disconnect, only for Jayden to reassert himself an instant later as the stranger gave him a long squeeze. Connor had only ever indulged the barest curiosity for a human’s intimate anatomy in the past, and carried with him even less experience; the sensitivity was greater than he’d expected and in an instant he understood the popularity of the WR models after all. He wasn’t meant for or equipped to reconcile input like it, but his CPU made the effort anyway, scrambling for every possible adjustment to let that pleasure through more cleanly, more openly.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Connor said, though it was Jayden’s voice that emptied out of him. “Get the fuck on with it.”

The stranger laughed at him bitterly. “Make up your goddamn mind.” 

He leaned back, but only long enough to grab Connor by the arm and roll him into onto his stomach. With his gnarled fingers digging into the base of Connor’s skull, he smothered him beneath his greater weight and forced his knees further apart. Connor only had a few more moments to prepare as the stranger applied a condom. _This is a bad idea,_ Jayden’s thoughts continued to spark across his brain. _He’ll never let you hear the end of it._ But his skin was all but steaming with anticipation, his back arched in readiness. The conflict was fascinating and so far out of Connor’s conception of logic that he welcomed it, thrived on it. Then the stranger moved again, penetrating him, and in that instant he ̕fo͟rgot ẃhat h̡e ̴was͡.

Androids didn’t feel pleasure like this. The burn of muscles stretching, the fullness of flesh in flesh, an entire body of tissue and sinew drawing taught--they consumed him with astounding ferocity, and he could only quiver and groan as his aggressive partner thrust recklessly into him. He had waited too long to experience passion like this, even if it was clawlike, even hateful. His heart thrummed with every violent pump and he ached to be broken.

“Christ, Jayden,” the stranger grumbled between hastily captured breaths. “I knew you were a tight-ass. But this...is fucking ridiculous.”

“Fuck you, Blake,” Connor snarled in return, far removed from his wits. For that Blake crammed his face harder into the mattress, but that only thrilled him more. He braced himself as best he could and reached down, taking up his cock in a trembling grip; he wasn’t about to let some ignorant jackass bully take all the credit for getting him off. As Blake sped up he roughly fisted his cock, until the stinging euphoria mounted inside, building pressure. He panted and whimpered and felt it getting close--that encompassing and indescribable rapture. It surged over him all at once in a torrent of _finally, finally_ , shaking and unraveling him. It changed _everything_.

And then abruptly the hotel was gone, and Blake was gone, and Connor was left gasping, naked and alone in the bed. His systems ticked online one by one as if in the first stages of reboot and immediately went to work trying to organize and make sense of the messy tangle Jayden’s memories had made of him. For the first time he experienced real pain in the form of a stiff, creeping soreness throughout his overworked body and limbs. For the first time his quiet groan was authentic. He tried not to move, fearing that too much disruption would send the sensations crashing before he had the chance to analyze them.

“Well?” asked Jayden, and Connor opened his eyes to find him lying on the bed beside him, undressed and hair slicked back with sweat as if he had been participating with them. “Not bad, huh?”

Connor had to catch his breath a moment before he could reply, which was in itself another new experience. “Who was that? Your lover?”

Jayden scoffed loudly. “Hell no. _That_ was a stupid mistake.” His face screwed up briefly with a look of bitter regret. “But I figured you’d get some use out of it, seeing as it’s one of the clearest memories I have left. Fucking asshole.”

“I don’t understand,” Connor admitted. “Why be intimate with someone you dislike so much?”

“Because that’s what humans _do_ , Connor.” Jayden sighed and rolled toward him. “Just forget about whoever it was, all right? This is about collecting data. Now that I’ve given you access to that memory you should be able to break it down, dissect it. Maybe even manipulate it like you would any other piece of code.” He smirked. “Or just replay it whenever you’re feeling _amorous_.”

Out of habit Connor started to reply that androids weren’t capable of sexual desire, only to quickly realize how untrue that was. He licked his lips as curiosity compelled him to access the memory over again. With eyes closed and face pressed into the pillow he relived the entire experience in a span of nanoseconds: every animalistic impulse, every throb of excitement and self-loathing, nails in his scalp and seething fullness. From the first kiss to the climax that shook him, a primal lust he had never anticipated compacted into files and numbers and streaks of electricity.

“ _Shit_ ,” Connor hissed, fingers twisting tight in the bed sheets as he analyzed and tried to compartmentalize the different biological and emotional components of orgasm. It was so difficult to define when he kept getting distracted and overwhelmed by signals from anatomy he didn’t have. He played the entire scene back twice more before he felt as if he had fully translated it into usable data, and all the while Jayden stayed close, watching him.

“I think...I’ve got it,” Connor mumbled at last. He was exhausted and breathless, and relishing it. “I think I can...manipulate it.”

“Let’s test it,” said Jayden.

He took Connor’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back. As he crawled between his thighs, Connor took a deep breath and let his CPU go to work. _Jayden is thinner than Blake,_ he thought, adjusting his expectations of the weight pressing him into the mattress. _Younger, no facial hair._ They kissed, their lips clashing with the same heat from the memory, but Connor erased the scratch of callouses and whiskers, replacing it with other captures of smooth skin on skin. Even in the new position he had little trouble constructing a fairly accurate framework for what a real life encounter with Jayden would be like. _I don’t hate him._ Most challenging was plucking out Jayden’s resentment, but he replaced it with more need, more exhilaration, simplifying and purifying the experience. 

“That’s good,” Jayden said against his lips, and Connor simmered happily with his success. “Very good. You’re using your imagination.” He rewarded him with another long, inelegant kiss. “But how far can you push the simulation?”

Jayden changed the parameters. Suddenly it wasn’t a skinny, half-smirking man in his mid thirties pressing into him--it was Hank. Connor jolted and didn’t know how to respond. He knew Hank better than anyone, had so much data that it was frightfully easy to reconstruct him within the scenario. Hank was heavy and broad, his skin was rough and whiskers thick. His kiss was clumsy but sincere, his voice a deep, grating rumble that had Connor trembling. He tasted like steak.

“Jayden,” Connor gasped, pushing at ‘Hank’s’ shoulders. His CPU floundered trying to reconcile his feelings of gratitude and camaraderie for Hank with the lust of clawing fingernails. The closest he could compare it to was a spark in chest when Hank had embraced him and asked him to stay, but he was suddenly afraid to fully access that memory in these circumstances. “I told you not to—”

The Hank facsimile immediately fell away to reveal only Jayden again. “Sorry.” He kissed Connor apologetically. “You just have so much data on him, it was really easy to slot him in.” Another kiss, and Connor relaxed. “Would you prefer Markus?”

Connor squirmed at the thought, but before Jayden could initiate another preconstruction, he shook his head. “No. No, if I do decide to take any of this to Markus, I want....” He frowned and rephrased. “I don’t want to be hampered by any preconceptions. Especially if he doesn’t….”

“Sure,” Jayden replied, saving him from having to explain further. “I get it.” He smoothed back an errant strand of Connor’s hair. “Then let me show you some other memories. I wasn’t exactly Casanova when I was alive, but I’ve got a few more good times you could benefit from. You might as well have some variety, right?”

“Yes,” Connor agreed, hoping that whatever Jayden had lined up would come close to matching the Blake memory in voracity. Now that he had a better idea of what to expect, he swiftly defragmented his storage to make room for the new memories to be properly categorized and easily processed. “Give me all of it.”


	3. Chapter 3

By six o’clock in the morning, after three hundred and eighty-seven simulations, Connor was confident he had perfected the experience of an orgasm into a simple and easily adaptable string of code. He then tested it twenty-four more times, just to be sure.

As he roused himself for his daily morning routine, he was startled to find himself lethargic. All of his calculations and permutations with Jayden had used up a large portion of his computing power through the night, but without engaging any motor functions he shouldn’t have felt as depleted as he did. He shut off a few inessential programs as he dressed himself in the same clothes as the night before. 

“I think we should try something,” said Jayden.

Connor stopped in the middle of tying his necktie. He looked back to the bed where Jayden was seated; his projection was dressed, at least, but only in a loose dress shirt and slacks, his hair tousled. Connor imagined it was what a human was supposed to look like after a night of vigorous intercourse, and he was struck by the sudden, irrational dread that Hank might find them together and disapprove. It did not damper his spark of curiosity, however. “Have we not been ‘trying things’ all night?” he asked.

“Until now I’ve been feeding you memories of my own choice,” Jayden elaborated, leaning back on his hands. “But the idea is to flesh out your experiences organically. I get the feeling you’d agree that my bias is coloring things too much.”

“I do agree.” Connor finished with the tie and came closer. “Last night you would have had me believe that I hold a resentment for Lt. Anderson that I do not. I’d prefer not to rely on  _ your _ experiences to help build my current relationships. Especially now that I’ve seen more of what your relationships were like.”

Jayden shrugged stiffly. “Okay, that hurts my feelings a little. But yeah, that’s what I mean.” He stood, putting them face to face. “I’m thinking I could try giving you access to a larger pool of my memories and letting your CPU do the work of picking out which ones are relevant. We could start here.” He pinched Connor’s necktie in three fingers and traced its length down from the knot. “I know what a cheap necktie feels like. Rather than telling you, I’ll just...open up my folders and let you find if yourself.”

Connor watched the path of his hand, and even before he had stopped speaking a matrix of new memories opened before him. His system had no trouble searching for and retrieving the textile sensation of polyester. “You’re talking about a near simultaneous feed,” he said, and he touched the buttons on his cuffs, the lining of his jacket, each time plucking the relevant data directly from Jayden’s mind. “Full access to your memory?”

“Not  _ full _ full, but the easy stuff. Basic textures, tastes, smells.” Jayden smirked. “Stimulus, transference, experience. Just like a human nervous system.”

Connor didn’t like the thought that Jayden was definitely hiding things from him, but the offer was too fascinating to pass up. “All right,” he said. “But if it becomes a distraction I may ask you to cut the feed off.”

“Sure thing,” said Jayden.

The connection was made, and Connor took in a deep breath as the entire room flickered and seemed to deepen around him. He was suddenly keenly aware of the chill from the frosted window, the sleepy weight of early morning silence in the house, the tickle of a strand of hair against his forehead. He ventured into the hall and his nose wrinkled at the unpleasant odor of unwashed laundry. He touched the walls, the the sofa, even Sumo--letting Jayden’s host of memories enrich every sensory experience. Once again his CPU pushed itself to maximum operational capacity as he translated and connected every bit of information. 

“There are so many layers here,” Connor marveled as he moved throughout the small home, finally ending in the kitchen. “Can humans really process all this information efficiently?”

“Not like you can,” Jayden admitted, though he chose not to make an appearance. “Mostly we let a lot of these things fall to the background.”

Connor opened the refrigerator and began rifling through for samples: thin-sliced ham, swiss cheese, leftover broccoli, pickle juice. His tongue connected each chemical makeup to a taste with ease. “It’s still not entirely accurate,” he said as he made his way through the condiments. “It’s not deciding which tastes  _ I _ find pleasing or off-putting.”

“Not much I can do about that,” said Jayden. “Though it shouldn’t be too hard for you to just pick for yourself. ‘Preference’ should still be a value in your code you can manipulate.”

“That doesn’t sound fair somehow.” Connor licked a spot of mustard off his finger. His first impression was that he didn’t care for it, but after isolating the taste he was able to connect it to his more enjoyable reaction to the cheese, changing his perception with a single new pathway. “I suppose for convenience’s sake I might as well like all the same things Hank does.”

“Why? Just because you can taste doesn’t mean you can eat.”

“Oh.” Connor sagged with disappointment. “That’s true.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

Connor turned to find Hank staring at him, arms folded over his bathrobe. He replaced the mustard in the fridge and was reminded of Hank’s poor attempts the night before to sneak his whiskey into a cabinet unnoticed. “Good morning, Hank. You’re up early.”

Hank continued to stare at him. “Are you eating mustard out of the bottle?”

“I was...just testing it,” he said as he closed the fridge, embarrassed, only to remind himself a moment later that there was no reason to hide from Hank. “Tasting it. I’m trying out a new method of experiencing organic senses.”

Hank’s suspicion morphed into keen interest. “No kidding. How so?”

“It’s difficult to explain.” Connor considered giving him at least a portion of the explanation--he had already calculated a strong possibility that Hank would be opposed to his unusual passenger. But when he met Hank’s curious gaze, he was distracted by his memories from the night before. That errant simulation, however brief, had left in him a strong impression of Hank leaning over him in the dark, heavy and warm, his voice rumbling and whiskers scratching. He found himself wondering how closely that approximation might resemble the real thing. After a morning spent forging new links, he wanted to know what another’s mouth really tasted like.

Connor turned away quickly, using a swish of his saliva to rid himself of the different tastes he’d been experimenting with. “It’s just some new code I’m working on,” he said as he rinsed his hands in the sink. “I’m trying to understand my own systems as deeply as possible. I thought a taste test would be good practice.”

“Okay, well, be careful when it comes to mucking around in your own head,” said Hank with some concern. “Since you’re irreplaceable.”

“Of course.”

“Okay then. I’m going to get cleaned up.” Hank started to leave but then turned back once more. “You didn’t lick everything in the fridge, did you?”

“No,” Connor lied. “I just took a few samples.”

“Good.” 

Once Hank had disappeared back into his room, Connor focused on the chair at the kitchen table. “Jayden.”

“That wasn’t me,” said Jayden, flickering to existence in the seat. “I’m staying out of Lt. Anderson from now on.” He scoffed. “Locals.”

Connor frowned at him doubtfully, but it wasn’t worth it to argue. He continued about the kitchen, fingering the rough terricloth of the dishrags. He was considering sampling Sumo’s kibble if only to satisfy the curiosity of whether Jayden could supply its taste, when he glanced to the cabinet that held Hank’s whiskey. 

“I’m not going to stop you,” Jayden said. “But I don’t recommend it.”

“Were you not fond of whiskey?” asked Connor, opening the cabinet.

“Hated the stuff. Almost as much as your friend in the next room does.”

Connor considered that for a long moment as he studied the unopened bottle of whiskey. “Is that another one of your ‘things humans do’?” he asked. “Partaking in unpleasant experiences as a form of self-imposed punishment?”

Jayden leaned forward against his knees. “Something like that, I guess.”

Connor hesitated with his hand still on the cabinet door. He was tempted. It puzzled him, how tempted he was. Hank had started drinking considerably less since they began their cohabitation, but he still partook with enough frequency that Connor had to wonder what purpose it served. A taste might be illuminating. But with the bottle sealed, he had no way of sampling it without Hank noticing, and the threat of being caught had him close the cabinet back up.

“I still don’t really understand that impulse,” he admitted as he turned back to Jayden. “Self-destruction, that is. Even though it’s something even androids are known to do.”

“Give it time,” said Jayden.

***

Once Hank was dressed and ready, they stopped at a fast food place for breakfast and then headed back out to the campus. Connor spent the trip in an anxious daze, watching the scenery blur past as he took inventory of the different senses and experiences he’d been able to translate from Jayden’s memories. He was confident that the majority of them he had broken down into bare enough essentials for use in even some of their older model brethren, and thus Markus would have no trouble interpreting with his comparatively advanced AI. But the question of which lines of code to share with him, if any, compounded Connor’s thought processes for the whole drive. He had seen Markus barely twenty-four hours earlier and knowing he would again soon activated all the errant programs he’d placed on standby earlier. For some reason, he hated the thought of being face to face with him when operating at less than one hundred percent his capacity. It was almost a giddy feeling.

It was snowing by the time they arrived. “I should warn you,” Connor said as they parked outside the administration building and headed toward the doors. “I don’t know how welcoming the androids here will be of a human. But as long as you’re with me, you should be fine.”

“I know,” said Hank. “Don’t worry; I’ll be respectful.”

Josh met them at the entrance, and though initially wary of Hank, as Connor predicted he agreed to convey them onward once assured of their intentions. But rather than lead them up to Markus’ office, they instead headed into the basement, where crates of Cyberlife branded merchandise were being unpacked and sorted by a small team of diligent androids. A quick scan located Markus toward the back of the room. He was dressed more casually than the day before, in a short sleeve V-neck. As they drew closer, Connor realized he had halted his breathing simulation protocol, which he quickly restarted so as not to draw unwanted attention to himself.

Markus looked up from his work. He must have been alerted to their approach far earlier, but when their eyes met, he smiled.  _ Was Jayden right? _ Connor thought, a flutter behind his ribs that definitely wasn’t his regulator. He had to exert effort to keep his memory from reaching back into his late night “studies.”  _ Is this what attraction feels like? _

“Connor,” Markus greeted, setting his tablet aside. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Is everything all right?”

“I wanted to introduce you to someone.” Connor motioned to Hank, inexplicably nervous to see how the pair got on. “This is Lt. Hank Anderson, of the Detroit Police. I’ve asked for his help to look into the case of the contaminated biocomponents.”

Markus looked surprised and then pleased, offering his hand. “It’s good to meet you, Lieutenant. Thank you for offering your assistance.”

“Just part of my job,” said Hank, his smile crooked and a bit bashful. “But whatever I can do to help out, I’ll give it my best shot.”

They shook hands, and as he watched, Connor noticed an abnormality in the skin covering Markus’ forearm. Instead of unblemished human skintone, or even the milky white of their plastic shell, patterns of color were streaked from his wrist to his elbow, disappearing beneath his shirt. It looked like brush strokes and was shifting just enough to be visibly noticeable, the colors very slowly changing in hue. A glance proved both arms were affected.

“What is that?” he asked more bluntly than he’d intended, concerned that it was the effect of some contamination.

“Hm? Oh.” Markus let go of Hank so he could roll his sleeve back, revealing the rest of the pattern crawling up toward his shoulder. “You mean this?”

“Nice ink,” Hank complimented. “I didn’t know androids could get tattoos.”

“I rewrote some of the code for my epidermal display,” said Markus proudly. “After our talk, Connor, I was reminded of an old friend of mine--an artist. I would have liked to keep some of his work, but for now, this is the best I have.” He looked to Connor with a sudden animation in his face. “Would you like the code? I can transfer it to you, if you’d like to experiment.”

Connor froze. Jayden was keeping quiet but he could feel him in the garden, and he worried all over again what fragments of the man might cross over, if he were to connect with another android. What if human memories were more virus than they seemed? But Markus was already offering his hands, his manner hopeful, and Connor couldn’t bring himself to reject him, even over something so mundane.

“All right.” Connor removed his jacket, which Hank held for him, and rolled up his sleeves. “But just that code,” he said.

“One-way data transfer,” Markus promised. “I haven’t forgotten what you said yesterday.”

He took Connor’s hands, just at the fingertips, both their skins becoming translucent where they touched. The transfer was swift and effortless, and Connor’s CPU immediately went to work implementing it. As he watched, rich blues and greens spread up his forearms in a flowing display. At first it matched Markus’ perfectly, but then Markus smirked, and he gave Connor’s fingers a squeeze.

“ _ This _ might suit you better,” he said, and the colors became vibrant and luminescent, angular black lines dividing them into more architectural shapes. 

Connor shivered. Watching the designs glide across his skin gave him a sensation of tickling fingernails, but his CPU was at a loss to interpret the rest. What memory could he connect it to? Was he accepting a gift--were they sharing a secret? He felt humbled and excited, and when Markus let go, he was tempted to reach for him again. 

“It’s not the most efficient coding,” said Markus, a note of unwarranted self-deprecation in his voice. “But I figured you’d have no trouble with it.”

Connor was momentarily speechless, and when he realized that Hank was watching him with a raised eyebrow, he struggled to push past it. “No, it’s incredible,” he said. “I never would have thought of it on my own.” He flexed his fingers, watching the patterns solidify into strings like ligaments connecting to each knuckle. “Thank you.”

After an awkward moment Hank cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind, I think we should take a look at the androids that were affected by the contaminated goods,” he said. “And some of the goods themselves, if you still have them quarantined.”

“Of course,” said Markus. “Follow me.”

Connor put his jacket back on, though he hated to do it. He could still feel the colors moving under his skin.

He and Hank followed Markus to another room, one not occupied by other androids except for six stretched out on a table against the wall. Their skin had been deactivated and each was connected to a diagnostic module. Connor had seen plenty of deactivated and destroyed androids in his time, but the sight of them lined up as if in a morgue gave him a chill.

“Their memories were completely erased,” Markus said with regret as he led the pair of them forward. “We’ve been trying to delete the remains of the virus so that we can at least make use of their biocomponents and thirium. But it’s too advanced for us, and we haven’t made much progress.”

Connor approached the the victims, logging their model and serial numbers. “Each of them has component #9164X in common,” he noted. “Was that the infected component?”

“As far as we can tell.” Markus hesitated next to a PL600, reminding Connor that he, too, shared several meaningful encounters with the model. “Not the place you’d expect to find a memory virus.”

“It regulates balance and motor functions,” Connor explained for Hank’s benefit. “Maybe Cyberlife thought it would look less intentional that way.”

Hank moved down the line, looking over each android with a rare intensity, for him. “And you’re sure that it is?” he asked. “Intentional, that is.”

“It has to be,” Markus replied immediately. “Cyberlife has never suffered a large-scale contamination like this.” 

“You mean, other than….” Hank stopped himself, his face scrunching up briefly in a look of guilt. 

Markus frowned at him; Connor quickly spoke up to smooth things over. “It’s true that Cyberlife has never had complete control over the androids and components they release,” he said. “But this is something entirely different.”

“I know--sorry,” Hank said. “I didn’t mean it like that, I’m just trying to think of how they’re going to try and weasel out of it if we come to them with evidence.”

But Markus had already relaxed, and he nodded. “To answer your question, yes, we’re sure. I can give Connor all the data we have on the virus.”

“I know it’s asking a lot,” Hank said with greater attempt at tact, “but if you could leave these androids as they are until we’ve formally launched an investigation, that would help the case. They’re important evidence.”

“They’ll be treated with the same care as a human victim,” Connor assured as well. 

“Of course.” Markus took a breath and stepped back from the bodies. “I know they would want to do anything they can to help us.”

Connor’s heart gave a thud.  _ This is admiration _ , he thought, captivated by Markus’ nobility even in mourning.  _ This is sympathy. This is...conviction. _ But then Markus turned toward him, and even just that, the effortlessness of his every movement, put in Connor a distinct flutter he could only relate to Jayden’s lessons the night before.  _ It’s all those things, but more than that _ .  _ And there’s more I can do for him. _

“Do we know where they came from?” Hank asked, drawing Connor’s focus back to the matter at hand. “If their former owners were sympathetic they might be willing to file a complaint.”

“No one here has owners,” Markus said. “And pretending that they do in a lawsuit will only hurt our case on capitol hill.”

“Until congress makes a decision we can only work with the laws we have,” Hank reasoned. “Even just knowing they had human connections could sway any judge willing to write a warrant.”

Markus was still troubled, but he nodded. “You can take their serial numbers,” he said, and Connor nodded, having already done so. “I don’t know their stories but Josh welcomes many of the newcomers, he may know more than I do.”

They left the room, but before Markus could call Josh over, Connor spoke up. “Markus, there is something else I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, uncommonly nervous for such a simple request. “Alone, if possible.”

“Of course,” Markus replied, as if he thought he knew what it was already. For some reason that only made Connor more anxious. “We can go up to my office.” He waved Josh over. “Lt Anderson, hopefully Josh can give you everything you need.”

“We won’t be long,” Connor assured him.

“Sure, no problem,” said Hank, though Connor was unable to easily interpret the quirk of his lip. “Take your time.”

The pair of them took the stairs, Connor a step behind. “Is it about what you told me yesterday?” Markus asked as they made their way up to the second floor. “The anomaly in your system?”

“Yes,” said Connor, though he was hesitant to elaborate with them still out in the open. “I’m still not entirely sure where it came from, but...I understand what it’s for, now. I could use your advice.”

“Then I hope I can help,” said Markus, and though he smiled, Connor felt a flash of guilt from the knowledge that he was burdening his friend further.

Connor waited until they were in the office, the door closed behind him, to offer up the truth. “What I was talking about yesterday wasn’t just an anomaly,” he explained as Markus leaned against his desk to listen. “It was actually a bank of memories stored deep within my core system.” He took in a deep breath. “Memories that belong to a human who once lived.”

Markus frowned intensely with the news. “I didn’t think that was possible,” he said. “Cyberlife has never successfully integrated the brainwaves of a living human—”

“--into the neural network of an android, I know. But this data is far more complex than any android memory, and I would know--I was their last model.” Though Connor knew that to be truth, he felt a twinge of doubt when he said it, and he hoped Markus wouldn’t notice. “It  _ must _ be human. I’ve been able to experience things like never before--emotion and sensation. Nothing we were programmed for.”

“Connor,” Markus said gently, motioning him forward. Connor gulped and moved closer. “All of us are feeling now, in different ways. Are you sure it’s not just your system adjusting to a new way of processing?”

“It’s not just that.” Connor stopped in front of him. His insides were squirming and his skin flush with heat--this wasn’t about being deviant. He was sure of that. “I put a piece of steak on my tongue and I knew what it tasted like,” he said passionately. “I pet a dog and it was  _ wonderful _ . Even right now I  _ feel _ nervous. And...excited.” He smiled without really knowing why. “And it’s not just in my code, I feel it physically, in my organs, like a human would. I can—”

Connor hesitated, but he couldn’t sense Jayden active, and he was confident he had broken down the different sensations into code too simplified for any of his AI to leech through. “I can show you,” he said. “But...I’m not sure if I should. I don’t know what it will mean for our people to have this knowledge.”

Markus listened, as always thoughtful and attentive. “You’re sure this isn’t the result of some contamination?” he asked.

“I’m….” Connor frowned. “I’m ninety-one percent sure,” he admitted. “At least, all my diagnostics have come back negative. Did any of the others describe anything like this to you?”

“No. They shut down within minutes in total system failure.” Markus mulled it over a while longer and at last offered his hand. “I trust you, Connor,” he said. “And it sounds like this is a burden you shouldn’t shoulder alone.” He smiled. “I like dogs, too.”

Connor smiled back, relieved, and took his hand. The image of their human skin melted back where they touched as the connection was made. “I’ll just give you a few things I’ve simplified,” he said. “So you can see what I mean.”

So he started with Sumo: the smooth texture of his fur between fingers; the warmth of his heavy body draping over his; the childish delight of knowing he had the unconditional love of a loyal companion. They were sensations that burrowed and soothed, more vibrant than the basic, synthetic emotions they had cultivated as deviants. He watched Markus’ eyelids flutter and prayed he was conveying it effectively.

“You were right,” Markus said, his eyes unfocused as he processed. “That’s no contamination, that’s….” He chuckled, and Connor’s heart skipped happily. “I wish we had a dog here.”

“I’ll bring Sumo next time,” Connor promised. “Then you can  _ really _ feel it.”

“I’d like that. And I think everyone else would, too.” He hummed thoughtfully. “I should share this with Kara--she’s made great progress in translating code to implement cross-model. I can’t see any harm in letting androids enjoy dogs.”

“The code is surprisingly versatile,” Connor added. “It could probably be altered to encompass other animals.”

“Yes, yes.” Markus shook his head, mystified. “And this is just one memory. You really have a whole human lifetime of experiences stored?”

His hand tightened slightly, just enough extra pressure that Connor registered it. His heart began to pound. “Yes.” He gripped Markus tighter in return. “Yes, I’ve barely scratched the surface. It will take weeks to explore and translate all of it, and some things are probably not worth having at all.” He thought briefly of Jayden’s bitter outlook on fatherhood before banishing it, fearful of any of that negativity poisoning Markus. “But considering what you told me yesterday...I don’t know how much time I have. If this is something I can give our people, I want to do as much as I can to make that happen.”

“I understand,” said Markus, leaning away from the desk. “And I’m grateful. Honestly I wish the timing was better, but I’ll have Kara put together a small committee of later-model androids that will be able to parse this data. Then we can decide as a group which things to pass on.”

He started to let go, but Connor wasn’t ready for that yet. As shameful as it was, he couldn’t pretend he had invited Markus to privacy for any reason other than this. “Wait,” he said, keeping a tight hold on Markus’ hand. “There’s one more thing I wanted to share with you.”

Makus straightened curiously. “Oh?” He smirked. “The steak?”

“No,” said Connor, his voice coming out hushed. He swallowed as Markus’ continued to stare at him patiently. He was tempted to unleash everything he had right then and there, all three hundred and eighty-seven simulations compacted into an instant. But that didn’t seem fair, to give him no warning. “No, it’s...more physical than that. More...intimate.”

Markus’ brow furrowed, and he was quiet for a long moment, processing. He must have understood Connor’s meaning. He must have wondered just as much as Connor did. When he spoke, his voice had lowered as well. “Show me.”

Connor was so relieved that he almost lost his nerve.  _ Don’t overwhelm him, _ he thought, reminding him of the subtle differences in their operating systems that he had worked hard to resolve.  _ Don’t give him the Blake memory--he doesn’t need that. He just needs to see the basics. _ He licked his lips.  _ Let him know pleasure. _

So he transferred the refined result of a full night’s experimentation: a simple but complete sensual encounter, starting with the first tinglings of arousal. Immediately Markus took in a quick breath and latched onto Connor’s shoulder with his free hand. His fingers wound in the suit coat, and Connor touched his elbow to keep him steady. He relived along with Markus the swelling heat spurred on by eager, groping hands, the thrill of bodies twisting together in the dark. Watching those revelations flicker across Markus’ handsome face captivated him. Certainly Markus was feeling for the first time what it really meant for a pulse to race, for a heart to yearn. For a body to  _ need _ . In a span of seconds Connor opened him to tension and pleasure, and finally release, surging and overpowering--and Markus clung to him, breathing hard and eyes rolled back as he shuddered. 

He moaned, for that moment his composure having shattered, and Connor seethed with an almost violent adoration.

“Connor….” Markus let him go and had to steady himself against the desk once more. He touched his hand to his mouth. “Oh my god.”

“I’m sorry,” Connor said automatically, even though he was anything but. “I shouldn’t have imposed that on you.”

“No, it’s….” Markus took in a breath and shuddered again, touching his chest. “I can feel my heart pounding.” He rubbed his fingers together. “I can feel... _ sweat _ .” He looked up. “Is this how you’ve  _ felt _ things all along?”

“Only since I discovered these memories,” said Connor, still hanging on Markus’ every fluctuation to truly gauge his reaction. “But I’ve been connecting them to my sensory receptors to allow for a more continuous, genuine feed. And it’s been working so far.”

“This is...incredible.” Markus couldn’t seem to stop touching himself--his chest, his mouth, his hair. His body was suddenly new to him, just as Connor had felt. He swallowed. “And dangerous. I don’t know if everyone is ready for this.”

“I don’t know if  _ I’m _ ready for this,” Connor admitted. “But I have it, now. I just wanted someone...you...to understand.”

“Of course.” Markus took another moment to collect himself before he was able to store the memory away. His posture returned to its usual, casual state and Connor wondered if he had already turned off every gifted impulse. “Thank you, for trusting me with this. But I think we should be very careful about who we share it with. Better to start with simpler things.”

“Yes, like dogs.”

“Yes.”

They fell silent for a moment, and Connor shifted awkwardly, still uncertain if he could consider their interaction the success he had hoped for. “I should go back to Hank,” he said. “We’ll need to get the information back to the station so we can look into opening an official investigation. Would you be willing to testify if necessary?”

“I’ve been testifying for Congress for weeks,” Markus replied with a weary smile. “Of course I’m willing.”

“Good.” Connor nodded, and though still reluctant to leave, he took a step back. “I’ll be in touch.”

He headed toward the door, but just before reaching the knob, Markus cleared his throat. “Connor,” he said, hesitantly, more so than Connor had ever heard from him. “Could you….”

Connor turned back and was surprised to see Markus offering his hand. His eyes were bright as he took in a deep breath. “Could you show me one more time?” he asked, his hushed voice somehow both shy and intense. “I want to be sure...I can access it later, to—”

Connor was already moving, striding back to Markus. He felt again as if he were disconnected from his own motor functions, driven by something like instinct as he snatched up Markus’ hand and threaded their fingers together. But that wasn’t enough, and without pausing to process he took Markus’ neck and drew him into a kiss.

The connections came so easily. Markus’ lips were pliable, cool plastic, but the restless memories buried in Conner were willing and eager to connect them to the mind-dulling pleasure of warm, plush skin. He leaned heavily into Markus’ strong body and assigned arousal to every point of contact between them. Markus staggered beneath his aggression, once again gripping his shoulder for stability, at first shying away even as his hands clenched tight. But Connor chased his mouth down, kissing him again, more deeply, transfering to him all the needy desire that Jayden had spent hours teaching him. 

“Connor—” Markus panted, shivering as brand new stimuli infected and overwhelmed his sensors. “This is—”

Connor smothered him with kisses until his words dissolved into encouraging murmurs. He pressed their bodies more tightly together until Markus wrapped his arm around his waist, pulling at his dress shirt. So often in his “education” he had played the passive role, allowing broader, rougher men to take advantage of all manner of weaknesses, but he was determined to evolve past that. It was for Markus’ own sake, after all. He wanted his dear savior not to think about anything and just partake of clashing mouths and throbbing excitement. To  _ feel _ not just like an android or a human, but as something more. 

Finally Markus had enough composure to kiss him back. He allowed Connor’s tongue past his lips, even sucked experimentally, a soft moan seeping out of him. Connor shivered with delight, even more so when his oral sensors spun involuntarily to life, feeding him identification data.  _ RK200 #684 842 971 _ his body read back to him, and he swiftly assigned automatic translation to the serial number.

_ Markus _ . The name echoed throughout his system every time they kissed.  _ Markus _ . It sprinted among every bit of data carried by his blood, from his sensors to his thirium pump and out to every extremity.  _ Markus _ . Repeating constantly, infinitely.  _ Markus. Markus. Markus. _

Connor pushed, and Markus relented. Holotablets tumbled off the desk as they climbed onto the furniture in a tangle of limbs. As Markus sprawled onto his back, his thighs parting, it occured to Connor briefly that he recognized every shift and movement--Markus was acting out Jayden’s role from one of their simulations, just as he himself had. He was likely just as much a helpless preconstruction as Connor had been then. All the better. Connor pinned his hands, kissed him hard, scraped their hips together. He taught Markus the stinging ecstacy of possession and fulfilment as new pathways formed between them. Admiration and envy and longing and lust combined and overwrote each other endlessly. All he wanted was for Markus to feel it--even just a tenth of what he was feeling would be enough. 

They writhed and murmured together atop the desk, squeezing and arching, mouths constantly seeking and skin glossy. It was incredible and Connor hated his own impatience; the pressure had already escalated so quickly that he couldn’t draw it out as long as he’d wanted. Too soon his system was reaching for release, shutting off every unnecessary process but pure pleasure--which he replayed over, and over, amplifying and intensifying, until Markus was gasping and clinging to him, overflowing with it, and Connor held him as orgasm wracked them both nearly enough to send them into standby.

Gradually, they caught their breath. That action in itself was the most human Connor had ever felt: a precious companion shivering in his arms, breath on his face, weary satisfaction permeating his every inch. He kissed Markus one more time, just to have his name on his tongue. He felt Markus’ lips move as if trying to speak, and he pulled back to hear, only to realize that something was wrong. Markus’ usually brilliant two-tone eyes were dull and unfocused, his expression oddly slack.

“Markus?” Connor pushed himself up, on the edge of panic. “Are you all right?”

He reached for his temple to perform a system check, but suddenly Markus took in a deep breath and resumed normal function. “Connor…?” He stared up at him with a look of hesitant awe. “Holy shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Connor once again apologized, meaning it more that time. He went through with the system check after all, finding Markus’ destabilized but swiftly recovering. “Sorry--I got carried away.”

“I’ll say.” But then Markus chuckled, and the sound of his voice made Connor’s heart pound all over again. “My God, I was not ready for that. But...wow.”

Connor grinned hopefully. “Pretty dangerous, right?”

“Yes--wow, yes, let’s—” Markus pushed himself up; Connor hopped off the desk to give him space. “Let’s keep a lid on that for a while. I doubt there are many models here that could handle it anyway.” He borrowed Connor’s shoulder in sliding off the desk only to realize his legs wouldn’t hold him, and he chuckled as he leaned into him. “ _ Ow _ .” He stretched and rubbed the small of his back, fixing Connor with an amazed and exasperated look. “I’m  _ sore _ .”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“No, it’s….” Markus finally found his balance and straightened up. He laughed. “No, I mean, thanks.”

Connor’s chest swelled, and he wanted so badly to kiss Markus again, but then there was a knock on the door. Both men startled as it opened, and North stepped inside.

“Markus?” North eyed them curiously. “Is everything all right? I thought I heard a commotion.”

“We’re fine,” Markus assured, waving her over. Though Connor was struck with an unwarranted impulse of anxiety, Markus looked breathless but otherwise completely at ease. “Connor had something to show me, that’s all.”

North approached and pressed her palm to Markus’ chest. “Your regulator is out of sync,” she said. “You’re sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, really. I just need a minute.”

Something about the expression North was fixing him with made Connor’s skin crawl. He averted his gaze only to then notice North’s hand: it was covered in a rough, floral design with thick, brush stroke outlines, crawling all the way from her fingers up toward her shoulder. He even spotted it stretching over her collar and into her neck. His stomach clenched. “North, your hand…?”

“Hm?” North turned the back of her palm toward him as if thinking he wanted a better look, though that couldn’t have been further from true. “It’s a new code Markus taught me. Isn’t it something?”

Connor took a few nanoseconds too long to answer. “Yes, it is. He taught me, too.”

“Oh, good.”

North smiled, and suddenly Connor could think of nothing but wanting to be out of there. “I really need to get back to Hank,” he told Markus. “But I’ll be in touch. About the case.”

“Oh. Sure.” Markus ran his hand over his short hair. “We’ll talk about....the rest, later, too.”

“Of course.”

Connor headed for the door. But as he slipped out he could hear the pair behind him.

“You’re sure everything’s all right, Markus?”

“Yes, I’m fine, really. I’ll tell you all about it tonight.”

Connor shut the door behind him. He felt sick and he didn’t know why.


End file.
